Nick's Tech/Multimedia Marketing Mash

In my previous article, I wrote about Bulletstorm’s unique approach to getting word about their game out by making fun of Call of Duty the biggest game in the shooter franchise (they also poked fun at another big seller, Halo, in a trailer that they recently released) through a demo for a fake game called Duty Calls (website down at the time of the writing of this post). This approach drew a lot of attention within the video games media but didn’t create much of a sensation among the mainstream news media. However, recently Bulletstorm has attracted the attention of Fox News in a much less desirable way.

In their article “Is Bulletstorm the Worst Video Game in the World?” Fox News slams Bulletstorm as being “particularly gruesome, with body parts that explode all over the screen” and takes special offense to the in-game system for achievements which is based on Skill Shots (based off the game’s theme of ‘Kill with Skill” where an emphasis is placed on the quality of the shots used to dispose of an enemy combatant) claiming that it “ties the ugly, graphic violence into explicit sex acts”. Later on, they quote Carole Lieberman who makes the far-fetched claim that “The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games,”. Granted, that claim is absolutely ridiculous, but it does touch on the problem that video games have had within the mainstream media with an image as being a bad influence on kids and encouraging violence (amongst all sorts of other unpleasant acts). This is a issue that the video game industry has been struggling with for a while now and one that it needs to fix if they hope to eventually form a positive (and potentially beneficial for exposure, sales and revenue due to free, widespread promotion) relationship with the mainstream media.

Now, how could the video game industry apply the same sort of tactics that the Alberta beef farmers did to establish that their product is safe and needed be looked at as a danger to society? The video game industry needs to appeal to the cognitive, affective and behavioural centers that influence people and help them to form attitudes about certain products or brands.

On the cognitive side, the industry could encourage (independent and unbiased obviously) research into whether video games really do have a detrimental effect on children if they, for example, have explicit sexual or violent acts contained within them. Additionally, the industry could again emphasize that there is a rating system that is designed to inform parents as to what age their children should be if they are playing the game (the ESRB rating system).

A title page for a guide from the ESRB

As for the affective side, they could appeal to the positive feelings of nostalgia that those who play video games have and remind them of the good times that they had playing those games. Furthermore, they could play on the patriotic feelings of Canadians and Americans by touting the strong presence of the video games industry in North America and the jobs and taxes that they contribute.

EA's Burnaby Studio

Finally, with regards to the behavioural side, they could offer free demos or copies of games (to the people that are commenting on games) that are on the more kid friendly side but still plenty of fun to play. This would help to change perceptions that all video games are violent and have a bad influence.

A cover of the game Wii Sports for the Nintendo Wii

Hopefully the games industry will be able to eventually shake their bad image but with a concerted effort things could change very quickly.